Restoring from Backup After Drive Crash

Question

Restoring from Backup After Drive Crash

I was working off a hard drive on a fcpx project that crashed. The media was not located inside the final cut pro project file, but rather, in folders by day.

FCP X was backing up the project files to the cloud, and I have a current backup. I also have two extra hard drives with all the media on them.

When I try to relink the media to the backup project file I am unable to reconnect 90 percent of it. Everything that is an image, or stock footage, or a song reconnects fine. The problem is the clips I shot (on the A7sii) will not reconnect.

Some of the clips have the same names, but in different folders. There are two Clip 039 for example, as the Sony doesn't have complex naming systems. But the clips have different lengths.

Any advice on how to reconnect my media?

Thanks

Donovan

Also, I did convert to proxies, but I do not have backups of those, nor am I worried about them. I have plenty of time to make new proxies.

Posted on May 28, 2016 3:38 PM

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Answer 1

May 28, 2016 3:42 PM in response to donovan Greene

Additionally, I can reconnect all the clips by hand, which would be VERY tedious, but possible. Except, clips that are in slow motion aren't allowed to be reconnected. I get this error.

The video frame rates don't match.

Relinked files must have the same media type, same frame rate, and similar audio channels as the original files, and must be long enough to cover all the clips that reference the files.

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Answer 2

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,825 points

May 28, 2016 3:43 PM in response to donovan Greene

Why exactly can't you reconnect? What happens?

When you go to reconnect a clip, the application should show you the expected file path to the folder the clip is supposed to be in. If you in import multiple clips into the same folder with the name Clip 039 FCP will append them with Clips 039(fcp1), (fcp2) and so on. In the reconnect window you should see the FCP clip name for the clip that's being searched for.

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Answer 3

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,825 points

May 28, 2016 3:44 PM in response to donovan Greene

Only having the problem with the slomo clips? Nothing else?

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Answer 4

May 28, 2016 4:44 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

I'm having a problem with ALL clips.

When I click relink clips it brings up a window with all the missing clips. I click on Locate All, and select the Media folder they are all in. It searches briefly and then says "Select another folder or file. None of the 3 files are found in this folder. I am pointing it to the Media Folder, but the actual files are inside the Media Folder in folders named A1, A2, B2, B3...etc

One or two slow motion clips wouldn't reconnect, but you can ignore that. I figured out why. It I mistakenly reconnect the wrong (say Clip0012), and then when I tried to reconnect it to the correct Clip 0012, I would get an error message.

Luckily I am able to hand reconnect them, but it's very time consuming. All the media is there, and I've completed two projects, and maybe 20 clips. But I have two hundred to go.

I've read all the forums and watched youtube videos about how it's supposed to work, but it's just not finding them, even though they are all there.

Any help is MUCH appreciated.

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Answer 5

May 28, 2016 4:44 PM in response to donovan Greene

I'm very familiar with reconnecting media, as I've done it a lot in the past with FCP 7 and Premiere. I understand that FCP X handles media differently, but it seems like if a hard drive crashes you should be able to easily rebuild the library from a fresh hard drive with a recent backup and an exact copy of all the media with same internal folder structure.

This is baffling.

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Answer 6

May 28, 2016 4:47 PM in response to donovan Greene

On a side note, I am using Disk Drill to recover the original drive and maybe able to save the original FCP library, but it seems like FCP X would be built to withstand a hard drive crash and backup restoration. I will acknowledge that the Sony naming convention is not as Robust as Red where the Roll number is baked into the clip name and each clip has unique naming convention at the tail of the name.

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Answer 7

May 28, 2016 5:01 PM in response to donovan Greene

I think there are two problems.

Here are screen grabs of the process. It appears that FCP X is looking for whatever name it gave the file C0040(fcp3) instead of the actual name which is just C0040.

Even if I point it to the correct folder it won't find the clip, I have to physically click on the clip to reconnect.

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